


While you sleep

by nat_scribbles



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: A Study in Pink, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Curses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 04:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nat_scribbles/pseuds/nat_scribbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson is a cursed army doctor with a psychosomatic limp. Who'd want him for a flatmate?</p>
            </blockquote>





	While you sleep

**Author's Note:**

> As always, the characters aren't mine, I'm just having fun with them, and English isn't my first language, please excuse the mistakes.

The pitter-patter of the rain on the windowsill fills the silence of the room. It fills everything, really, because that’s all his life is now. Silent, vacuum, stillness,  _peace_. It’s asphyxiating. The only time he’s surrounded by noise again is during his nightmares, and John isn’t sure that’s much better either.

 

John lets out a sigh that sounds really loud. He stands up, walks over to the mirror, his steps in counterpoint to the rain, and looks at himself. He winces. The scar talks to him, he’s a doctor after all.  _Nerve damage_. It’s only one of the things that it tells him, but it’s the one that hurts the most because of what it implies. He won’t be a surgeon anymore. Ever. He won’t go back to the home front. He’s stuck.

 

The room is eerily silent and it’s suffocating. The rain has stopped. The doctor throws some clothes on, any clothes, layers of clothes to keep from the English cold: undershirt, shirt, jumper, jacket. The scar is buried beneath them, no one can see it. He can almost imagine it’s gone. His leg reminds him how real it is and he grabs his cane. He needs to get out of the quiet flat.

 

The bitterly cold air slaps him in the face with the smell of wet pavement and dirt. John breathes in. He had missed that smell, or so he had thought. He walks. His leg hurts but damn it, he has to do something,  _anything_ , so he just walks and walks. He doesn’t have a direction, but then again that’s nothing new, is it?

 

“John! John Watson?”

 

 

***

 

 

John looks at the piece of paper Mike gave him to make sure he’s on the right place. “ _Sherlock Holmes. 221B Baker Street_ ”. John takes a deep breath and knocks.

 

An old lady opens the door and smiles kindly at him. “Are you here for a case? I’m afraid you’ll have to come back after sunset, dear.”

 

John leans a bit more on his cane, understanding. “I can’t.”

 

The lady’s eyes widen slightly and then John can see it, written plainly on her face.  _Pity._ She  _pities_  him. “I see. You’re a…”

 

“Yes.” John doesn’t want to hear it. “My friend Mike Stamford told me to come here, said Mr. Holmes was looking for a flatshare.”

 

She nods and steps back so John can come in. “I’m Mrs. Hudson, the landlady.”

***

John sighs as he sits down on the armchair, rubbing his sore leg. Well, his new armchair. The flat is a complete disaster, but it could be very nice with a bit of tidying up. The price is good too, better than his current poor excuse of a flat (and it’s noisy outside, so much better than his current really poor excuse of a flat). He quickly agrees. Then he discovers the skull… and the severed fingers in the fridge.

 

“I’ll tell Sherlock to clean up a bit. I’m the landlady, not the housekeeper.” Mrs. Hudson offers kindly.

 

“Yes. Thank you, that’ d be good.”

 

The answer seems to please the lady, who looks like she expects John to run away from the flat any moment now. “I’ll make you a nice cuppa, you rest your leg.”

 

“Damn my leg!” John can’t help it, her words send a jolt of pain up the limb. “Sorry, I’m so sorry. It’s just sometimes this bloody thing…”

 

“I understand, dear, I’ve got a hip.” She pats him motherly and John cringes inwardly. Great, now he’s one of the elder cripples. He feels bad about it immediately, Mrs. Hudson is too nice.

 

“Cup of tea’d be lovely, thank you.”

 

“Just this once, dear. I’m not your housekeeper.” John notices she has said this before, more than once, and smiles to himself.

 

“Couple of biscuits too, if you’ve got them.”

 

“Not your housekeeper!”

***

 

Sunset is approaching fast and John goes back to his flat with the promise of moving in the next few days. He sits down on the bed and opens the newspaper. It makes a terribly loud noise and he swallows drily. It makes noise as well.

 

He reads until he can feel the familiar pull at his eyelids. Surely enough, the sky is almost completely dark. He changes into his pyjamas and gets under the covers, closing his eyes.

 

The nightmares begin almost immediately, but John can’t wake up from them, he can only wait for the night to pass.

 

***

John moves in within the next day, it isn’t like he owns many things to begin with. There is a room upstairs for him and the flat looks much tidier, even if the skull is still there. John eyes it curiously and shrugs, it isn’t the first skull he sees after all. He is a bit more worried about the more meaty, but equally dead, contents of the fridge and the Erlenmeyer glasses and Petri dishes on the table, filled with god knew what.

 

Mrs. Hudson says she’ll tell Sherlock about it.

 

***

 

It has been three weeks since he moved in and John doesn’t have much to do, so he decides to try reading his flatmate’s website. The man is obviously a genius, but the entries are written in a way that john would need a dictionary to decipher them. Soon, he’s yawning and his eyes flutter close.

 

When he wakes up several hours later, there is a note next to him.

 

_Afghanistan or Iraq? SH_

 

Mrs. Hudson must have found it and put it there while he was sleeping.

 

_***_

 

John bolts awake suddenly, a cry on his lips.  _I don’t want to die. Not yet._  Then he takes a deep breath and reminds himself it was just a nightmare. He looks out of the window. It’s dark. It should be impossible, but he is awake. Has he broken it? Has he paid his debt? Is he free?

 

It’s wishful thinking, he knows. It’s probably just a mistake, he should go back to sleep and pretend it never happened. God knows what the consequences will be if he stands up and enjoys this unique moment of freedom, how dangerous it will be.

 

John steps out of bed, his heart thrumming loudly in his ears, adrenaline flooding his veins, and walks down the stairs to make himself a cup of tea. That’s all he craves, all he wants to do. He doesn’t need to go out and run and jump and scream and sing. He is happy enough to do his little ritual of tea making. It’s only when he goes over to his armchair to sit that he sees him.

 

There is a lanky dark-haired man sprawled over the sofa, sleeping deeply. John eyes him curiously, putting his mug down on the table. He has a mop of curly hair and impossible cheekbones, and his lips are parted, even breaths going in and out of them. He’s wearing a suit, a very nice one at that, it’s surely expensive, and John can’t help but think the man has collapsed from pure exhaustion on the sofa, unable to even reach his room and change into his pyjamas.

 

It has to be him, Sherlock Holmes. John knew he could technically have opened the door to the man’s room any day now, but that was an invasion of privacy. Still, he fit Mrs. Hudson’s descriptions. He was cursed, too. What had he done to get indebted with the witches? John had traded his freedom of sleep for his life back in Afghanistan.  _I don’t want to die. Not yet._

 

John puts a blanket over Sherlock and drinks his now slightly cold tea, looking at him. There is something that doesn’t quite fit, but he can’t put his finger on what it is. Well, something other than him being awake during the night. He looks down at his empty mug and decides it’s time to go back to bed.

 

***

 

There’s a blanket on the sofa the next morning and a note.

 

_Thank you, John. SH_

 

John smiles. He scribbles down an answer before going to sleep that night.

 

_You’re welcome. It was nice meeting you, Sherlock. JW_

 

_***_

 

The notes come randomly. John will find them around the flat every few days or once a week. His leg hurts a bit less those days.

 

***

 

_We’re out of milk. SH_

 

_What exactly do you do with the milk? I just bought some yesterday! JW_

 

_Experiments. SH_

 

_If that was the thing in the bathtub, I got rid of it. Also, what is a head doing in the fridge? JW_

 

_Experiments. SH_

 

_Well then, keep them away from the food. And eat something while you’re at it. JW_

 

***

 

_John, what do you think of these? SH_

The note comes with a picture this time. Of a person. A dead one. John merely raises his eyebrows, finishes his cup of tea and sighs as he scribbles an answer about the strange bruising on the man’s arm and the slight discoloration of his skin while he is at it. As it turns out the next morning, he’s solved a case. Well, helped his flatmate solve one at the very least.

 

 

_You never answered my question. SH_

 

_Which one? JW_

 

_Afghanistan or Iraq? SH_

 

_Can’t you deduce it? And here I was, thinking you were a genius. JW_

 

_I am. I also don’t make guesses. SH_

 

_Afghanistan. JW_

 

_Your limp is psychosomatic. SH_

 

_I know. JW_

 

_I can fix it. SH_

 

_In your dreams. JW_

 

_***_

 

There is a violin on the table one morning. John takes it in his hands with utmost care and examines it. It’s an elegant instrument. He quite likes music, he used to play the clarinet after all. He was awful at it, but he liked it nevertheless. He plucks at the strings carefully and looks for the case. It’s nowhere to be seen. Slowly, he turns towards the only closed door in the flat, Sherlock’s room. He knows he shouldn’t, but he does anyway. Holding his breath, he opens the door. It doesn’t even creak. He smiles fondly at the sleeping man. Unlike when he was on the sofa, he isn’t sprawled on the bed like some sort of giant starfish, but all curled up on his side, the dark curls falling lightly on his face. He sees the dark blue case by the bed and carefully puts the violin and bow back. On his way out, he brushes the curls out of the detective’s forehead softly. He looks so young.

 

***

 

_So you play the violin then? JW_

 

_Very observant, John, how did you deduce that? SH_

 

_Is it strange that I can hear the sarcasm in this even if I haven’t heard your voice? JW_

 

_***_

 

The notes stop and John doesn’t know what to make of it. They had been daily for what, two, three months now? He had gotten used to finding them in the most normal and in the most definitely not normal places. Post-its on the kitchen table, on his armchair, by the sink, inside the fridge, on the bathroom mirror, under the toilet lid… And now they are gone and John doesn’t know what to do. He opens the door to Sherlock’s room and he isn’t there. He starts to worry and pain shoots up his leg. Mrs. Hudson finds him clutching it and breathing heavily on the floor. She makes him tea. John lets it grow cold and finally asks for Sherlock. She says he does these things. “He’s probably sleeping at the morgue or the yard, dear. Don’t worry, he’s fine. That brother of his makes sure he’s always fine.” John has nightmares again for the first time since the notes started.

 

***

 

Sherlock returns after four days. John finds him collapsed on the sofa again and relief floods him. He drags him to the bed, carrying him on his back, takes off his shoes and suit jacket, and puts him under the covers. Before he goes to bed that night, he leaves a box of takeaway curry and a glass of water on the bedside table with a note.

 

_Eat! JW_

 

***

 

John frowns. There is a small USB on top of his laptop that definitely wasn’t there the day before. He sits down on his armchair, ready to update his blog (because really, Ella is just being a pain about it). Curiosity is stronger than his desire to keep his therapist happy and most importantly, out of his arse. There is only one file.

 

“Hello, John…” there is a pause and John cocks his head to the side. He doesn’t recognise the deep baritone and really, a voice like that should be unforgettable. There is a rather awkward pause before it continues again. “You said you’d never heard my voice so this is it…” he said… oh! So  _this_  was Sherlock’s voice. He could hear a lady’s voice chuckling… Mrs. Hudson. “Oh, this was a stupid idea!” Sherlock said, and John can almost picture the lanky man blushing. He giggles at the idea. The file ends.

 

It takes him a while to figure out how to record using the microphone on his laptop, but by the end of the day, he puts the USB on top of the violin case with a smile.

 

***

 

“Good night, Sherlock.”

 

“Good morning, John.”

 

***

 

“I’ve always been curious, how did you know about Afghanistan? Good night, Sherlock.”

 

“I didn’t know, I saw. Your haircut, the way you hold yourself, it all says military, but you met me through Stamford. So, army doctor, obvious. Your face is tanned but no tan above the wrists. You've been abroad, but not sunbathing. Your limp's bad when you walk, but you don't ask for a chair when you stand. Like you've forgotten about it, so it's at least partly psychosomatic, just like your therapist says. That says the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic. Wounded in action, suntan - Afghanistan or Iraq. Good morning, John.”

 

“How do you know about the limp? You’ve mentioned it before, too. Good night, Sherlock.”

 

“CCTV. It’s not that hard to break in. Good morning, John.”

 

“Right. And the therapist? Good night, Sherlock.”

 

“You've got a psychosomatic limp, of course you've got a therapist. Then there's your brother. Your phone. It's expensive, e-mail enabled, MP3 player. You're looking for a flatshare. You wouldn't waste money on this - it's a gift, then. Scratches. Not one, many over time. It's been in the same pocket as keys and coins. The man sitting next to me wouldn't treat your one luxury item like this. So it's had a previous owner. Next bit's easy. You know it already.  _Harry Watson - from Clara xxx._  Good morning, John.”

“The engraving? Good night, Sherlock.”

  
“Harry Watson - clearly a family member who's given you his old phone. Not your father - this is a young man's gadget. Could be a cousin, but you're a war hero who couldn't find a place to live. Unlikely you've got an extended family, certainly not one you're close to, so brother it is. Now, Clara - who's Clara? Three kisses says romantic attachment. Expensive phone says wife, not girlfriend. Must've given it to him recently - this model's only six months old. Marriage in trouble, then - six months on, and already he's giving it away? If she'd left him, he would've kept it. People do, sentiment. But no, he wanted rid of it - he left her. He gave the phone to you, that says he wants you to stay in touch. You're looking for cheap accommodation and you're not going to your brother for help? That says you've got problems with him. Maybe you liked his wife, maybe you don't like his drinking. Good morning, John.”

  
“How can you possibly know about the drinking? Good night, Sherlock.”

  
“Shot in the dark. Good one, though. Power connection - tiny little scuffmarks round the edge. Every night he goes to plug it in and charge but his hands are shaking. You never see those marks on a sober man's phone, never seen a drunk's without them. Good morning, John.”

 

“That was amazing. Good night, Sherlock.”

 

“You think so? Good morning, John.”

 

“Of course it was!  _Extraordinary._  It was quite extraordinary. Good night, Sherlock.”

 

“That’s not what people normally say. Good morning, John.”

 

“What do people normally say? Good night, Sherlock.”

 

“Piss off!” There’s a low rumble of the detective chuckling. The doctor loves it. “Morning, John.”

 

John intends to send him something serious, but every time he tries to record himself, he thinks of Sherlock laughing and he can’t keep from doing so himself. In the end, all that comes out is a “Night, Sherlock.” Between choked giggles.

 

“Did I get anything wrong? Morning, John.”

 

John decides to tease him and purposely ignores the question. “Harry and me don’t get on. Never have. Lara and Harry split up nine months ago and they’re getting a divorce. And Harry is a drinker. Night, Sherlock.”

 

“Spot on, then. I didn’t expect to be right about everything. Morning, John.”

 

“Harry’s short for Harriet. Night, Sherlock.”

 

“Harry is your sister… Your sister!” there is a disbelieving pause. “There’s always something…” the detective mutters angrily. “Morning, John.” He finally says, his tone gentle again.

 

***

 

Sometimes, Sherlock will tape his deductions while he’s on a case. John always tells him how brilliant he is, how amazing what he does is. Hearing his deep baritone as he speaks so fast John feels like he is being bombarded by the words, caught in a rapid-fire, is the highlight of his day.

 

If he’s on a long case, there is a recording every day, even if his deductions aren’t complete yet. Usually, there is a picture of a body as well. John doesn’t have nightmares of Sherlock not coming back again this way.

 

***

 

Mrs. Hudson comes up for tea and biscuits one afternoon (before sunset, always before sunset) and hands him a small USB of her own, winking at him. Once she’s gone, John plays it.

 

It’s a violin, pure and simple. Only a violin. The melodies seemed to change from one to the other without pause, perfectly blended together. Before he even realised it, it was another song. John plugged in his laptop and put the file on repeat until it was time for him to go to sleep.

 

“You play beautifully, Sherlock. Good night.”

 

***

 

John wakes up in the middle of the night… again. He makes his way downstairs silently, but Sherlock isn’t anywhere in to be found in the flat. He frowns. Then he notices his laptop. Open. With new files.

 

“Victim is in her late 30s, professional person going by her clothes. I’m guessing the media going by the frankly alarming shade of pink. Travelled from Cardiff today, intending to stay in London for one night from the size of her suitcase.”

 

There was a new voice.  John guesses it is the DI that his flatmate helps sometimes. “Suitcase?”

  
“Yes. She’s married at least ten years, but not happily. She’s had a string of lovers but none of them knew she was married.”

  
“Oh, for gods, sake, if your just making this up…”

  
“Her wedding ring. Ten years old at least. The rest of her jewellery’s been regularly cleaned, but not her wedding ring. State of her marriage right there. The inside of the ring is shinier than the outside, so it’s regularly removed. The only polishing it gets is when she works it off her finger. It’s not for work, look at her nails. She doesn’t work with her hands. So, what, or rather, who does she remove her rings for? Not one lover, she’d never sustain the fiction of being single for that amount of time, so more likely a string of lovers. Simple.”

  
John can’t help but smile. “Brilliant!” he mutters to himself.

 

“Cardiff…?”

  
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  
“It’s not obvious to me.”

  
“Dear god. What is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring! Her coat- it’s slightly damp, she’s been in heavy rain for the last few hours- no rain anywhere in London in that time. Under her coat collar is damp, too. She’s turned it up against the wind. She’s got an umbrella in her left hand pocket, but it’s dry and unused. Not just wind, strong wind, too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she was intending to stay overnight, so she must have come a decent distance but she can’t have travelled for more than two or three hours because her coat still hasn’t dried. So, where has there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time? Cardiff.”

  
John smiles at the screen again. “Fantastic!”

“Why do you keep saying suitcase?”

  
“Yes, where is it? She must have had a phone or an organizer. Find out who Rachel is.”

  
“She was writing Rachel?”

  
“No, she was writing an angry note in German! Of course she was writing Rachel, no other word it can be. But why would she wait until she was dying to write it?”

  
“How do you know she had a suitcase?”

  
“Back of the right leg. Tiny splash marks on her right heel and calf not present on the left. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand. Don’t get that splash pattern any other way. Smallish case, going by the spread. Case that size, woman this clothes- conscious- could only be an overnight bag, so we know she was only staying one night. Now where is it? What have you done with it?”

  
“There wasn’t a case.”

  
“Say that again.”

  
“There wasn’t a case. There was never any suitcase.”

  
“Suitcase! Did anyone find a suitcase? Was there a suitcase in this house?”

  
“Sherlock, there was no case!”

  
“But they take the poison themselves, they chew, swallow the pills, themselves. There are clear signs, even you lot couldn’t miss them.”

  
“Right, yeah, thanks. And…?”

  
“It’s murder. All of them. I don’t know how. But they’re not suicides, they’re serial killings. We’ve got ourselves a serial killer. Love those. There’s always something to look forward to.”

  
“Why are you saying that?”

  
“Her case! Come on, where is her case, did she eat it? Someone else was here, and they took her case. So the killer must have driven her here. Forgot the case was in the car.”

  
“She could have checked into a hotel, left her case there.”

  
“No, she never got to the hotel. Look at her hair! She colour-coordinates her lipstick and her shoes! She’d never leave any hotel with her hair still looking… Oh… Oh!”

  
“Sherlock, what is it, what?”

  
“Serial killers, always hard. Have to wait for them to make a mistake.”

  
“We can’t just wait…”

  
“Oh, were done waiting. Look at her, really look! Get on to Cardiff. Find out who Jennifer Wilson’s family and friends were. Find Rachel!”

  
“Of course, yeah… but what mistake?!”

  
“PINK!”

 

The recording ends. John licks his lips. While a deduction isn’t unusual (and Sherlock has mentions the serial suicides often enough the past days), the lack of a good morning, however, is. He clicks on the next file.

 

“So let’s work together. We’ve found Rachel.” That’s the DI again.

  
“Who is she?” Sherlock’s voice. John automatically relaxes at the deep sound.

  
“Jennifer Wilson’s only daughter.”

  
“Her daughter? Why would she write her daughter’s name? Why?”

  
“Never mind that, we found the case. According to someone, the murderer has the case, and we found it in the hands of our favourite psychopath.” John doesn’t know that voice, but he doesn’t like it. Nor does he like the things it is saying to his friend.

  
“I’m not a psychopath. I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research. You need to bring Rachel in to question her. I need to question her.”

  
“She’s dead.”

  
“Excellent. How, when, and why? Is there a connection? There has to be.”

  
“Well, I doubt it since she’s been dead for 14 years. Technically, she was never alive. Rachel was Jennifer Wilson’s stillborn daughter, 14 years ago.”

  
“Oh, that’s… that’s not right. How… why would she do that? Why?”

  
“Why would she think of her daughter in her last moments? Yep- sociopath. I’m seeing it now.” John runs his tongue over his teeth and sucks, annoyed. Whoever the fuck that man is, he doesn’t like him one bit.

  
“She didn’t think about her daughter. She scratched the name on the floor with her fingernails. She was dying. It took effort. It would of hurt… If you were dying, if you’d been murdered, in your very last few seconds, what would you say?”

 

“…”

“If you were clever, really clever. Jennifer Wilson, running all those lovers, she was clever. She’s trying to tell us something.”

  
“Isn’t the doorbell working? Your taxi’s here, Sherlock.” That is Mrs. Hudson. God, the poor woman. She isn’t cursed, yet she can’t keep a normal sleeping schedule... because of them.

  
“I didn’t order a taxi. Go away.”

  
“Oh, dear. They’re making such a mess. What are they looking for?”

  
“Shut up, everybody! Shut up! Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t breathe. I’m trying to think. Anderson, face the other way. You’re putting me off.”

  
“What? My face is…?” Oh, so it is Anderson then. John hates Anderson.

  
“Everybody quiet and still. Anderson turn your back.” John giggles.

  
“Oh, for God’s sake!”

  
“Your back, now, please!”

  
“Come on, think. Quick!”

  
“What about your taxi?” Why was there a taxi if Sherlock hadn’t ordered one?

  
“MRS. HUDSON!” John frowns. Sherlock shouldn’t shout like that at the old lady, it's wrong. “Oh… Ah! She was clever. Clever… clever, yes! She’s cleverer than you lot and she’s dead. Do you see? Do you get it? She didn’t lose her phone, she never lost it. She planted it on him. When she got out of the car, she knew that she was going to her death. She left the phone in order to lead us to her killer.”

  
“But how?”

  
“What, what do you mean, how? Rachel! Don’t you see? Rachel!” John frowns, lost. “Oh… Look at you lot. You’re all so vacant. Is it nice not being me? It must be so relaxing. Rachel is not a name.”

  
“Then what is it?”

 

“Lestrade, on the luggage, there’s a label. E-mail address.”

  
“Er, jennie.pink@mephone.org.uk"

  
“Ah, we know she didn’t have a laptop, which means she did her business on her phone. So it’s a smartphone. It’s e-mail enabled. So there was a website for her account. The username is her e-mail address, and all together now, the password is…?”

  
“Rachel.”

  
“So we can read her e-mails. So what?” John is beginning to seriously hate that Anderson guy.

  
“Anderson, don’t talk out loud. You lower the IQ of the whole street. We can do much more than just read her e-mails. It’s a smartphone, it’s got GPS. Which means if you lose it, you can locate it online. She’s leading us directly to the man who killed her.” There are some tapping noises. “Come on, come on. Quickly!”

  
“Sherlock, dear. This taxi driver…” god, that is one hell of a persistent taxi driver!

  
“Mrs. Hudson, isn’t it time for your evening soother? … Get vehicles, get a helicopter. We’ve got to move fast. This phone battery won’t last forever.”

  
“We’ll just have a map reference, not a name.”

  
“It’s a start! Narrows it down from just anyone in London. It’s the first proper lead that we’ve ha… d… It’s here… It’s in… 221 Baker Street. How can it be here? How?”

  
“Well, maybe it was in the case when you brought it back, and it fell out somewhere.”

  
“And I didn’t notice it? Me? I didn’t notice? Anyway, I texted him, and he called back… Who do we trust, even if we don’t know them? Who passes unnoticed wherever they go? Who hunts in the middle of a crowd?” There is a text message alert.

“Where are you going?”

  
“Fresh air, just popping outside for a moment. Won’t be long, just let me save this recording to my computer for John.” The file ends and John smiles. It makes him happy that Sherlock talks to his… friends? Well, whatever they are, about him. He’s in the middle of a case and he still thinks of him…

 

He’s in the middle of a case.

 

It’s not finished.

 

There is no ‘good morning, John.’

 

Realisation dawns on him suddenly. Sherlock never ordered a taxi. It’s still midnight. John silently thanks Harry for his modern phone and logs onto the dead woman’s email, traces her phone. It’s moving. John throws some shoes on, grabs his gun and his coat, and dashes out of the flat.

 

No witch's curse can stop him from saving his friend.

***

While he is in the cab, he calls New Scotland Yard and asks for Lestrade (that was the name, wasn’t it?  He’s hardly going to ask for Anderson). The man that answers matches the voice in his recordings and John spills everything he knows, he has  _deduced_. Lestrade barks orders from the other end of the line immediately and John hangs up. The phone has stopped moving and he feels a familiar pull on his eyelids.  _Not now, not now, not now!_ He fights it, but he’s helpless against it. He barely has time to slur the direction before he surrenders to slumber.

***

When he wakes up, he is at his destination. The cabbie looks slightly pissed that he fell asleep, but the numbers kept running. John winces at the sight, that had to be the most expensive cab fare he’s ever paid for sure. It is still dark outside, and John doesn’t know what to make of that. Waking up from the curse twice in a day (well, night) seemed impossible, yet here he was. He throws some notes at the cabbie and steps out, looking for Sherlock. Surely enough, there is another cab parked outside of the building.

 

John runs, checks every room as fast as he can, shouts Sherlock’s name. He can’t be wrong, he  _has_  to be right, because he needs his friend to come back to the flat and tell him brilliant things and play violin and god, John just needs to see his sleeping face once again and… and that was exactly what he is looking at. Sherlock’s sleeping face. God, he hopes it’s sleeping and not…

 

John shouts Sherlock’s name and aims. It’s a clean shot, takes the man in front of his friend down immediately. Sherlock stirs at the noise. Yes, good, not dead. John feels the pulling on his eyelids again and he pinches the bridge of his nose. He can’t fall asleep, not now, or he’ll be caught. Surprisingly enough, he fights it successfully this time. With one last look at Sherlock’s peaceful face, he disappears from the building. He can hear the sirens approaching as he walks away and (thank you Jesus) finds a tube station.

 

***

 

He misses his stop when he falls asleep again and wakes up nearly at the end of the line. Thankfully, the curse doesn’t assault him on his way back anymore until he is in Baker Street and he has just about enough time to collapse on top of the sofa before closing his eyes and giving in to the darkness.

 

***

 

There is no recording when he woke up. He doesn’t really expect one either, he only wants to know Sherlock is alright. He groans and stretches, his stiff back popping and cracking. Someone has covered him in a hideous orange blanket and removed his coat. His gun is also safely on top of the table. John smiles. It’s next to a note.

 

_I told you it was psychosomatic and that I could fix it. SH_

 

John looks at his leg and realises he had forgotten his cane the night before. He turns the paper to scribble his answer  (his thanks, really) on the back, but finds it was already written on.

 

_Thank you. SH_

***

John starts an investigation of his own. He wants to know why he had been able to wake up those times. He goes to countless libraries and bookstores, he visits with so called specialists in witchcraft and curses and even goes to mad houses, where the ones that are worst-off live.

 

He doesn’t find anything.

 

***

 

There is a thick manila envelope on the table when he wakes up the next morning with a note on top of it.

 

_I believe you will find this useful, doctor Watson. Consider it payback for saving my brother’s life. MH_

 

John frowns, he has heard of Mycroft Holmes before. In fact, he has been abducted by his very pretty PA, given a choice to spy on Sherlock (, which he refused. How would he do that anyway? They hadn’t even met properly!), and dropped him off back home. He suspects the man is cursed as well, why wouldn’t he show his face then?

 

The manila envelope contains detailed and extensive information on curses. John avidly takes it all in, reads page by page, takes down notes, makes copies, highlights said copies, and even memorises some bits.

 

***

 

John falls asleep on the sofa. He had intended to take just a quick nap, he was a bit tired from rereading the same things over and over again for days and trying to make sense of them. He closes his eyes.  _It will only be a moment, just to rest and clear my head a bit._

 

***

 

He wakes up a couple of hours later with two thin, yet strong arms, wrapped around him and a solid, lanky body behind him, breathing hotly on the back of his neck. John finds himself relaxing into the touch and turns around in the loose embrace to face his sleeping flatmate. He buries his face in the man’s neck and breathes in deeply. He could stay there forever. In fact, he does, basking in Sherlock’s warmth and eventually falling asleep again once sunset arrives. “Night, Sherlock.”

 

***

 

He wakes up during the night again, still on the sofa and with a consulting detective wrapped possessively around him. John blinks completely awake and frowns. Sherlock had woken up during the day and now he was waking up at night. There had to be a connection, there had… his eyelids become heavy again and he falls asleep once more.

 

***

 

John wakes up alone. He sighs and stands up, rolling his neck and shoulders to work the kinks out of his body. The sofa is too small for two people, at least for an extended amount of time. Still, he’d loved it.

 

He hums as he makes himself a cup of tea and toast, walks over to his laptop and… there is no file. Oh. The morning is suddenly less bright. He settles down on his armchair, collecting his notes and absently chewing, when he notices a scrawling on them that isn’t his handwriting, but that he knows all too well.

 

_We can only be awake while the other is asleep. That is our curse, John. SH_

 

The words chill the doctor to his bones. It wasn’t like he had expected to ever meet Sherlock, to have a conversation with him, a proper one that wasn’t scattered through days and recordings, but he still feels deeply disappointed and he wants to cry and scream and punch something at the same time. He does none of those things, however, he just grips the edge of the table hard as pain shoots up his leg. It isn’t fair. Why them? John looks at the sentence again and rereads it. Sherlock hasn’t wished him a good morning. John is glad, it isn’t a good one.

 

***

 

After a week of mopping around, the doctor pulls himself together and starts investigating gain. He knows what their curse is. Now he just needs to find a way to break it.

 

It becomes his obsession.

 

***

 

He exhausts himself every single day reading about curses and deals with witches until sunset, forgetting to eat and drink. Mrs. Hudson tuts and say she has enough with Sherlock, that he shouldn’t start behaving like this as well. John doesn’t care, he mostly ignores the plates of food shoved in his direction and continues to read and search for an answer, a solution.

 

The fourth time he falls asleep mid-afternoon from exhaustion or dehydration (he can’t remember, it isn’t important anyway), he wakes up in Sherlock’s bed. He curls his body around the detective’s and drifts off to a peaceful sleep.

 

***

 

Weeks turn into months. Sherlock scribbles down on John’s notes, pinpoints what the doctor hasn’t noticed, ads information of his own. Soon, it’s a combined work, a shared fixation. They  _have_ to break the curse, they have to.

 

It seems to be getting nowhere. John sometimes wants to give up, he lets dismay wash over him and his leg hurts again. He can tell that Sherlock is having a hard time as well. Sometimes the tapes will just be of utter silence  before the muttered ‘Morning, John’ and there will be a deep indent on the couch, as if someone had been mopping on it all day long without moving. John then smiles to himself, thinks of the detective sulking, and feels less alone.

 

He gets to work again. They have a curse to break.

 

***

 

John sits on the edge of Sherlock’s bed and strokes the dark curls tenderly. He isn’t scared of doing so anymore, he knows the detective won’t wake up. “It’s been a year since I moved in, Sherlock.” He tells him with a bittersweet smile. “Thank you.” Then, he hesitantly lowers his face and kisses the man’s cheek. “Good night, Sherlock.”

 

***

On some days, John purposely takes a nap even if he’s not tired just to wake up with the detective’s body around him. On some nights, usually when the nightmares come back, he wakes up and limps downstairs to curl himself in the man’s lanky frame.  _Small mercies_.

 

***

 

Sherlock finds a small pattern in the curse while he is playing the violin. “Oh! Of course!” the deep baritone exclaims. There is a rustle of papers. “Oh that is… you’ve never been the most luminous of people, but as a conductor of light, you are unbeatable. Some people who aren’t geniuses have the most amazing ability to stimulate it in others.” John frowned, mildly amused and just a tad offended, except not really. He was offended because he knew he should be offended, but that was praise in Sherlock’s language and he knew it. He looked at the new notes Sherlock had added and smiled. There was the sound of a pen being put down on the table after the one of someone writing on a paper. “Oh I could kiss you right now, John!”

 

John feels his ears burn and knows he has blushed terribly. He hides his face in the union jack pillow with a small giggle, feeling light and just a bit guilty. After all, he has stolen a kiss already.

 

***

 

John puts his present under the tree. Sherlock had complained about the decoration being “unnecessary” and some other rude things. The good doctor ignores him completely and patiently puts up everything again when he wakes up in the morning to find everything in boxes. The detective finally gives up and John has his Christmas. He only wishes he could spend it with Sherlock.

 

***

 

John wakes up in his flatmate’s arms. The telly is on. It’s a bit past midnight, he can see the fireworks out of the window and his eyes water. He hasn’t seen anything like them for so long. The doctor knows he fell asleep on his bed, so Sherlock has had to carry him downstairs, not that he’ll ever admit to such a thing. “Your memory isn’t the most reliable source, John”. The doctor smiles at him and dares to steal another kiss, this time on the lips.

 

“Happy New Year, Sherlock.”

 

***

 

John begins typing up Sherlock’s cases on his blog. The investigation is going nowhere and Ella is concerned again. He has to distract her in some way.

 

He ends up as the detective’s PA, writing up cases of clients that come during the day for the man to read and take on if he’s interested (almost never) when he wakes up.

 

It’s a nice distraction. John feels useful again.

 

***

 

John looks out of the window, spring is coming. He’d say he can smell it in the air, but that would be lying. He knows because it’s the last clue they have. If this doesn’t work, they are completely and utterly lost again, all their work, almost two years of it, will have been for nothing.

 

The man looks out of the window and sighs.

 

***

 

John feels nervous, butterflies in his stomach. It’s more like a knot, really. Or nausea. Maybe it’s all at once. He has never had trouble falling asleep, it is the reverse that presents problems. And they have been practicing. It has to work. They  _have_  to break the curse.

 

12 hours of day. 12 hours of night. It’s time.

 

***

 

It’s a comfortable feeling, warm, fuzzy. He’s asleep, but not quite. He’s not awake either. John is in a limbo in between, enough to have tendrils of consciousness and somewhat coherent thoughts, enough to remember what is going on (or supposed to be), enough to feel his own body through the haze without waking up completely.

 

It’s a dangerous equilibrium, really, if he slips too deep into slumber, there is no guarantee he will wake up again before the day (or night?) is over and they will have lost their opportunity. If he wakes up completely, the same could happen with Sherlock.

 

He can feel the man’s warm breath on his forehead and he shuffles closer on the bed, burrowing into him. The detective stirs a bit and John’s eyelids feel heavier for a moment, but then he’s back in the limbo and an arm is wrapping around him lazily, the breath on his face less even. The doctor thinks he is smiling, but he can’t be too sure, he barely feels his own body.

 

He feels a warm hand on the small of his back, holding him still, and another one over his heart. He feels thick hair between his own fingers and he knows it al too well, he has stroked it countless times already, and soft skin beneath his palm.

With great effort, he leans up, lips trailing along Sherlock’s pale throat until he blindly reaches his mouth.

 

Not waking up is a feat as emotion bursts through him and shakes him to his very foundation. It barely qualifies as a kiss, they are too asleep and uncoordinated for that, but he can feel Sherlock responding him, slowly moving his lips as well, sloppily licking them. He knows he isn’t doing much of a better job either. Still, it is the best kiss John has ever had.

 

***

 

They spend the whole day (and night, how can they be sure after all?) sleepily getting to know each other, hoping they are not too far into sleep that they won’t remember it when the morning (or night) comes.

 

***

 

There is no breaking to the curse, not unless the witch decides to lift it. They never do. John and Sherlock are indebted, they didn’t want to die when it was time and they have to pay for it. John is grateful enough that they have found a way of almost avoiding it twice a year. He can’t wait for autumn to arrive.

 

***

 

They perfect the art of the limbo over the years. They slip up sometimes, making them wait what seems an eternity to both of them until the next chance comes. Twice a year. More than what they are allowed to, and still not enough.

 

It’s all they get though, they’ll manage, they always do.

 

***

 

It’s almost ten years that they learn how to sleep-talk without waking up. Conversations are held in hushed and slurred whispers.

 

“I love you.”

 

“I love you too.”

  
  
“Good morning, John.”

  
  
“Good night, Sherlock.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ineffableboyfriends on tumblr because she wanted _'a magical realism AU fic where Sherlock can only be awake when John is asleep and vice versa. Like a curse or something. They could communicate in notes so when john wakes up he has a note from sherlock and when sherlock wakes up he has a note from john and they just keep doing that. And they could like put tapes and stuff so they could hear eachothers voice when they wake up, like “Good Morning John” “Good night Sherlock”. And Sherlock will tape his deductions and ask for John’s opinion and John will record himself telling Sherlock that he’s brilliant and amazing because someone has to.'_ I hope I didn't ruin this completely.


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